Thursday, 23 August 2012

Hunters Blade

Orion The Hunter

The stars in the magnificent constellation of Orion-The Hunter represent Orion with his two hunting dogs fighting Taurus the Bull. Found on the celestial equator it is visible throughout the world.

The Orion Nebula is known to be one of the most fruitful factories in space. It is found in the second star in Orion’s Belt (a chain of three stars) and is a stellar birthing ground where stars and planets are born from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. It is one of the brightest nebula and also visible to the naked eye in the evenings as a diffuse glow.

Via a high definition spectroscope (HIFI) Herschel has identified within the Orion Nebula all the molecules needed for the creation of life – water, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, dimethyl ether, hydrogen cyanide and others.

Most are fatal to humans but with the right combination of temperature, and exposure to radiation, these chemical molecules can arrange themselves to form basic amino acids – the building block of life.

How this leads to complex life is still a much debated issue. But complex life cannot exist without amino acids. These are the building blocks of proteins. (Proteins are the active elements of cells.) They aid and control the chemical reactions that make the cells (and therefore life) work.

Whilst this does not prove the existence of alien life it does prove the universe is ripe with the ingredients needed to build it, given the right combination of circumstances.

Sunday, 19 August 2012

Dark Side Of The Sun

A rare Solar Storm is forecast to stretch from 2012-2013 when the Sun’s 22-year magnetic energy cycle coincides with its 11-year peak in super-powered solar activity.The Sun is a kind of star referred to as a magnetic variable, and it experiences varying levels of magnetic activity, meaning we also see fluctuating periods of activity on the solar surface .

This happens in periodic cycles of roughly 11 years and an increase in magnetic activity heralds the start of a new cycle in 2011. This is known as a solar maximum, at which time sun spots and solar flares burst into life with a vengeance.

Credit: David Hathaway, NASA/MSFC

Sunspots are large magnetic areas on the solar surface; they are sources of solar flares, coronal mass ejections and intense UV radiation.

Solar flares could cause power grids to overheat, causing our electricity-dependant lives to go into meltdown. Sat nav’s and air travel will also be hit as major satellites stop working, when the Sun reaches a frenzied frequency of sun spots.

Modern technology cannot, with any accuracy envisage what may follow next. This uncertainty lies in a very simple fact: No one fully understands the underlying physics of the sunspot cycle.Solar flares and “coronal mass ejections” (CME’s) are the driving force behind Solar Storms, and can hurl billions of tonnes of super-charged particles and radiation hurtling towards our world which has the effect of causing power surges and communication disruptions.

By London 2012 Olympics, such effects could already be occurring producing city-wide power cuts and disruptions in broadcasting as a result of satellites going out of action.

As with a lightning bolt Solar flares cause a sudden and rapid change in the Earth’s magnetic fields on Earth – The Solar Effect. If this up and coming Solar Storm is powerful enough it could cause more damage than Hurricane Katrina.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory a 4.5 m craft will help scientist understand the complex systems that drive the Sun’s magnetic field, is designed to capture images of the Sun in 10x more detail than it has been possible to achieve up until now. It has the ability to capture every 10 seconds and in 8 wave-lengths images in Hi Definition . It is intended to study the solar atmosphere and also to delve deep beneath the chaotic surface to gather information regarding the tumultuous under layers .

Set for launch in 2017 the European Space Agency’s Sun Explorer “Solar Orbiter,” hopes to embark on a 3.4 year journey to the Sun. Total mission length 6-7 years. It will pass closest to the Sun every five months which will allow it a few days for a unique view of the solar surface and also allowing it to study the storms in the solar atmosphere that build up.

Equipped with a “heliospheric imager” it will be able to keep track of CME’s (coronal mass ejections) which in 1989 knocked out Canada’s electricity grid leaving millions without power. It will also have an ion spectrograph which will monitor any other forms of energetic particles thrown out from the Sun.

Sunday, 10 June 2012

CHERNOBYL’S LOST CITY - COME WALK WITH ME IN THE LAND OF WOLVES

(Updated 12 June 2012)

In light of the the current crisis at the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor…Choose your future carefully! It is you who has to live in it!

“We walked into a wasteland, grey and desolate. The buildings had deteriorated, windows had been smashed. Trees and weeds had grown over everything. It was a ghost town.” (Pripyat)

(Image Credit:TimmSuess.com)

(Tim Mousseau – Professor of Biological Sciences from the University of South Carolina - describing his first visit to Chernobyl)

Along with Anders Møller, an ornithologist and evolutionary biologist from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, Tim Mousseau has conducted on-site research into the effects of radiation on humans and animals, with highly controversial results.

The basic facts of the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident in the Ukraine — the worst in history are well known. At 1.23am on April 26, 1986, reactor number four at the Soviet nuclear power plant exploded, after an electrical test went horribly wrong. The radioactive material released was many times greater than the fallout over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, polluting about 80,000 square miles of land across Europe and spreading radioactive rain as far as north-west Ireland. In the wake of the accident, more than 300,000 people were evacuated and an 800 square mile exclusion zone created around the reactor – “the zone of alienation.”

LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF THE RUINED REACTOR – THE LAND OF WOLVES

Pripyat was built as a town for the Chernobyl power station workers. It was viewed a model town. The apartment blocks were alive with fir trees and rose beds. It was a town of young people and growing families.

25 years on the abandoned town of Pripyat has become a wildlife haven. The Land of Wolves.There have been sightings of wolves, bears, wild boar and moose wandering the deserted streets, and swifts swooping round abandoned office blocks. Likewise sightings of deer and wolves have been reported at Kiev Oblast, situated near the border with Belarus, in the zone of alienation in Northern Ukraine. The only other resident is a solitary guard. Prior to the accident the population had been around 50,000.

The site of the Red Forest remains one of the most contaminated radio-active sites in the world today.

Although radiation levels have dropped significantly since 1986, there are still "hot" regions. the most contaminated areas measuring 300 microSieverts per hour on the Geiger counter, the equivalent of 1,200 times normal radiation levels.

VEGETATION

Therefore it is surprising the vegetation in the zone of alienation has flourished. Like a strange nature reserve, flora and fauna, in the absence of human interference have reclaimed the abandoned land. Scientists have found that since 1990, growth flourished and the ecological effect has been positive. Eighty percent of the zone is now forested; before the disaster, it was just 20 percent. A total of 240 species of animals have been

counted within the exclusion zone, most of which were present only in low numbers before the disaster. Giant catfish swim in radioactive water that surround the six nuclear reactors. Since nobody is going to go fishing, they’ll continue to breed and grow.That one should never eat the mushrooms or berries found there and that some of the clover might have six leaves is however another story.

So, could it be that if wildlife can return so soon, nuclear radiation and power might not be as dangerous as we first thought?

AN ECOSYSTEM IN CRISIS

The first discovery that Professors Møller and Mousseau made was that birds in the fallout zone were suffering increased levels of genetic mutations. The examination of 20,000 Barn Swallows found crippled toes, deformed beaks, malformed tails, irregularly shaped eyes and tumours. Some birds had red plumage where it should have been blue, or blue where it should have been red.

Because of contaminated food supplies, bird species have declined by more than 50 per cent in high-radiation areas. Only a fraction of the Swallows and Great Tits are reproducing, and of those that do lay eggs, only five per cent hatch. Less than a third of birds survive to adulthood. Professors Mousseau and Møller could confirm that these abnormalities were genetic by examining the Swallows' sperm.

They discovered a connection between antioxidants, radiation and plumage colour: showing birds with the brightest plumage are more likely to die.

Antioxidants in both humans and birds, help counteract the effects of radiation Brightly plumaged birds migrating long distances eg Swallows, produce a lot of free radicals as a by-product of their very high metabolic rate and , resulting in tissue damage ~ Professor Mousseau.

Supplies of antioxidants in their blood and liver offset this. Large amounts of antioxidants are directed to the female’s eggs, causing the bright yellow yolk.

If their destination is in highly contaminated areas, they find it impossible to replenish energy reserves preventing Swallows from maintaining their bright plumage or re-directing enough antioxidants into their eggs, so few chicks hatch.

It continues down through the food chain. In the areas of highest contamination, fewer butterflies, bumblebees, grasshoppers, dragonflies and spiders are found. "The fact that insects, including pollinators, are sensitive to elevated contaminants has a significant impact on the rest of the ecosystem," ~ Professor Mousseau. There is also another tragedy here. Professor Mousseau has started working with the Hospital for Radiation Biology, in Kiev, on a long-term study of humans who live in the area: more than 11,000 adults and 2,000 children in the Narodichesky region, 50 miles from Chernobyl.What will be the consequences for the children of these children????

The incidence among locals of cancer, birth defects and reduced lifespan is alarmingly high.

Update: 10th June 2012

Re: In discussing the conflicting research findings on whether wildlife really is recovering in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, one deadly serious point the optimists who think this land is going to recover from the worst industrial accident in history should take into consideration is:

“While iodine-131 decayed long ago and the strontium and cesium are slowly becoming less potentially lethal, the hot particles of plutonium-241 scattered across the landscape are actually decaying into an even more toxic isotope, americium-241. A more powerful emitter of alpha radiation than plutonium, americium is also more soluble and can easily find its way into the food chain. Americium-241, in turn, decays into neptunium-237, another energetic alpha emitter that has a half-life of more than 2 million years. As of yet, the long-term effect of americium-241 on animals remains largely unknown.” ~ Wired Magazine

You have walked with me through the Land of Wolves...There will without doubt be many and varied opinions on the use of nuclear energy as a "safe, clean, low-carbon" energy source. But the hard cold fact that remains, seems to be that we cannot live WITH it yet neither can we live WITHOUT IT.

I for one just hope that we too will not be walking in "The Land of Wolves."

Monday, 4 June 2012

What One Fears…

Stand up for what you believe in, even if it means that sometimes you’ll stand alone. Fight for those who cannot fight for themselves, and be the voice of those who cannot speak. Tread Softly….

Wolf (Madadh-alluidh): The wolf is a cunning intelligent creature, capable of out-thinking hunters. It can teach you how to read the signs of Nature in everything, how to pass by danger invisibly, how to outwit those who wish you harm, and how to fight when needed.

Humans have, throughout the course of history, followed the ways of the Wolf. They have studied the ways of the hunt and learned from the wolves social structure. And it is from this communal culture, the nature of the Wolf, that humans have learned how to co operate in order to achieve a goal. There is much to be learned from the wolf if only we will listen.

Wolf is the animal guide of true teachers. Wolves are connected to the moon and feminine energy. They teach us to respect our emotions and unconscious urges. And also to have respect for the wildness of our animal natures, and be prepared to face the darkness within ourselves. Wolves are connected with Sirius the Dog Star, and many cultures still believe that this is where our ancestors and teachers come from.

Wolves are fiercely loyal to those they consider part of their pack. They often have strong leadership qualities. It is important that they learn to lead the situation gently, without tearing others apart or the pack will likely turn on them. Whatever spiritual beliefs they may have those who connect with the wolf will feel more at peace when they honor or re-link (the actual meaning of the word religion) with the life force.

Wolf – creation, healing, purification

“If you talk to the animals, they will talk to you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them, you will not know them. And what you do not know you will fear. What one fears, one destroys.”

Monday, 30 April 2012

She is fearless, brave and courageous…the life force, intuitive and loyal hearted…

The wild nature belongs to such a woman, it is the essence of her soul, the consciousness of her heart and spirit the ambient voice of her dreams and aspirations, the compassion of her words of empathy and the song of her humanitarianism. It is the passion that drives her to establish her territory and to seek out and create her pack, and to nurture.

The wild nature gives a woman the strength to stand, and to roar like a lion in the face of injustice, wielding the sword of spirit and infinite determination against all the odds, refusing to fall at the feet of her tormenters, rising against the storm pitted against her in the sure and certain knowledge she will never give in or give up.

Such a woman is an instinctive creature, who refuses to bow to shame, who uses her feminine wile and wits to lead all in her charge through danger to safety.

~Moon Song Wolf~

The Silence of Eternity

“Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth”~ Carl Sagen

Lunar frost mountain tops contrasted with the stark black of cosmic space, the cold glitter of distant stars strangely bright in the clear skies. A New Moon star wolf watched silently from the ghostly lunar sentinels and alien crags and rock faces, dusted with layers of silvered regolith. Star silvered moon watcher on an alien moon

A sliver of sunlight slanted above the horizon. The first shadow of dark ring world system rising on moons dawn lit horizon, the impossible deep purple world rising steadily to hang in silent ringed beauty, filling the entire horizon of the moon world. The New moon star wolf watched silently. Viewing the silence of eternity for the first time, caught in its dark ringed alienness.

New wolf moon. Huge and bold it hung dark and shadowed in a mystical sky high over the plains of ultra home of the star gates. Moon wolf watching. Glowing silver star wolf answering the call of its star kindred, calling the haunting song of the time-moon wolf across the red skins of another world, a mysterious, matted globe glowing dimly in the sky of another world.

The song of the stars echoing gently the void that was Ultra’s outer limits. The velvet blackness of interstellar space. Tiny moons dwarfed by the mother world’s size and luminosity glittering silently in the winking void, tiny star-ships moving steadily closer through the silent darkness.’’

As the ancient myth makers knew we are children of the Earth and the sky. We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the Earth, finite and lonely and somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time. ~ (Who speaks for Earth)

“The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.” ~ (The Backbone of the Night) Carl Sagen)